Indian police officers ‘mocked’ gang rape survivor

| Man arrested over rape of 18-month-old girl

NEW DELHI - Four Indian police officers were suspended on Friday after it emerged they had refused to help a woman who had just been gang raped, mocked her and accused her of inventing her story.

The 19-year-old student, who cannot be named, went to police after she was repeatedly raped by four men outside a railway station in the central Indian city of Bhopal on Tuesday.

Her family later alleged police had “mocked” them and repeatedly turned them away when they tried to lodge a complaint, according to Santosh Kumar Singh, deputy inspector general of police in Bhopal.

He said the officers had accused the woman of telling a “filmi” story, using an Indian English word derived from the movie industry to imply that she was exaggerating.

“Three inspector rank officers have been suspended and one superintendent of police has been removed from his posting for dereliction of duty and misbehaviour,” Singh told AFP by phone.

Meanwhile, a man accused of raping a toddler in front of his own children has been arrested in India, police said Friday, the latest in a series of sex attacks against minors in the country.

The 18-month-old girl had gone to play with her neighbours’ two children aged two and four on Wednesday when she was allegedly raped by their father in their one-room home, police said.

The girl, who is recovering at a New Delhi hospital, was found dumped outside her house bleeding and in pain by her mother after the alleged assault.

The suspect was arrested on Thursday, said Harinder Singh, an officer in the Aman Vihar neighbourhood where the assault apparently took place.

He has been charged under India’s Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, which means he could face life imprisonment. The head of the Delhi Commission for Women Swati Maliwal met the child and said she was in a stable condition after undergoing surgery.

“The poor child cannot even speak, she is just laying there,” Maliwal said. The attack adds to a grim record of sexual assaults on women and children in India.

Nearly 11,000 cases of child rape were reported in 2015, according to the National Crime Records Bureau’s latest figures.